New beginnings

Moving on...
find me here, starting fresh again.

Dreams

I have had a lot of weird dreams over the past ... well, mostly forever. The last few years have involved me being in a large liminal space (library, mall, bar-inside-an-airplane, hotel, etc.) and a lot of dreams about packing to go somewhere, usually overseas, but always on an airplane.

I have been on an airplane precisely TWICE in the past 8 years, to and from a getaway last February (2024). It wasn't a great experience, though the people-watching was great. I've turned into my mother in this respect--she loved to eyeball all the people in the airport.

Last night I was packing up to go home for the summer from college. Except I wasn't in a dorm; I was in the bedroom of our previous (nearby) house. And we drove (we meaning Sparky and me). Or rather we were driving. A lot. We had to go over one mountain to get to the town we were staying in (in Colorado), visiting distant (not-real) relatives? My sister and her husband were there; my brother called. [These "relatives" bore a sneaky resemblance to my neighbors across the street...)

Anyway.

To get on to our next stop, as we discussed, we had to go back over the mountain to meet up with another highway, and then go BACK OVER the SAME mountain on a different road to get to ?Denver? or wherever we were off to next. I thought this was ridiculous to have to go over the same mountain TWICE more. There's also a lot of road construction in my dreams.

I am pretty solid on what all of the disparate parts of this means to me, but I am thoroughly sick of all these wide-open spaces and endless walking/moving to and fro in them. Not sure I'm exactly ready for a cave or a dark hole in the ground, but please can I stop having to walk a mile to get across the fiction section of my library to get to the (not-real) space on the other side that looks like a big downtown atrium??

The house is a disaster-zone, I have so many things to sort into boxes, so many possibilities of things to fill my time, so many phone calls I need to make, so many flowers I have to try to keep alive for a reasonable amount of time...

...so I'm going to work instead today, because I already have off tomorrow and Saturday.

Is it time?

I don't know if I have the stamina and brain-skilz to reboot this little project. Maybe I should just move to another blog, but I'm not sure I have the patience for setting that up. Then again I have--if literally nothing else--discovered in myself a deep pool of patience I thought I would never live to see. 

Beast died about three weeks ago.
Yesterday was his funeral.

It doesn't seem real, but now the really obnoxiously hard part is in front of me and I DON'T LIKE the look of the landscape I see. Lots of paperwork, forms, talking about money (which is a change from constantly worrying/not thinking about money because ... that way there be monsters), waiting on hold with various customer service lines... 

In other news, I am now the mother of a daughter. Sparky has, in the last 5 months, outed herself as a girl, so that's been a strange new wrinkle in life, making me evaluate my own internal biases yet again. We got side-by-side pedicures for her 32nd birthday in February, but she's still the same old Sparky I've always loved.

In bigger family news, there are a few new faces in the branches of the tree so I will have to update that family list again. Fortunately, somehow, Beast is the only one to leave. Del and Marie continue to hang in, but they are getting older. Neither were at Beast's funeral: Marie has an oxygen tank she has to use at night and it's heavy (she needs to get a concentrator or one of the backpacks, STAT!), Del being Del had no money for a plane ticket because taxes. 

I'm listening to the playlist I made for Tom's visitation yesterday. I don't think I heard any of it because of all the people. It was a pretty full house, with lots of people wearing red. Sparky spoke, and cried a lot. 

Despite not wanting to make this a funeral post, it's tacking pretty near that topic so I'll close. And procrastinate on everything else by looking at new blog templates, probably. 

Well. It had to happen eventually. I was up all night, in shifts, puking my dinner up from 10 till about 1. The rest of the night was spent rehydrating in small doses to be sure it wouldn't kick the peristalsis in again. Of course the other end got into things as well, so it was just a rough night. I'm very shaky and thirsty still this morning. This is precisely why I keep ginger ale and 7-Up in the house always, but it was a hella long hike downstairs to fill up cups with that and ice chips at 2 a.m. Those stairs are steep, and I nearly threw up when I got back upstairs (both times--because I'm an idiot) because I was so out of breath.

I've restocked the G.A. and ice and I'm going back up to bed shortly. Zero stamina this morning--a quick shower and I was toast again, shaking and panting.

Wah wah wah, poor me.

Today I am...

...waking up very sad and overwhelmed. Thank God for good friends who are swooping in to help me get my shit together re getting these damn forms filled out. I feel like such a slug: lazy and stupid, with New Added Panic at 2 a.m.! Quite literally, last night (this morning) I woke with a start, heart racing, no dream-memory at all, just an extreme anxiety jolt about due dates and penalties and "losing everything" (as in the house, money, car, job) because I didn't get the stupid paperwork done.

All this is exacerbated by the discovery/reminder that I work tomorrow, so my "free hours" this weekend just took a major hit. And I think I put my foot in my mouth saying something thoughtless yesterday at at meeting at work. I'm so tired of that; and I'm so tired of beating myself up for doing this sort of thing.

I am better than this.

What is wrong with me!? [that is a rhetorical question: I know very well what's wrong--there's a long list]

Sailor Moon

So in last night's Weird Theater of the Mind, it was costume day. Not Halloween exactly, just sort of a random cosplay day at work. Only not my actual workplace: it was an amalgam of the two long-term places I've worked.

To set things up: I had initially not come in costume, and the dream started out with me asking Techie at work why in the world we'd hired a former blog friend (J) to work as a sort-of IT person in-house. Techie had forgotten that J used to work in the system and is a raging nightmare, not to mention currently works as the director of a university library out east. However, that quickly segued into this dressing up dream. Once I saw people arriving in costume with me in my "street duds" I was easily convinced by several other coworkers (Barnum, Hello Kitty, and Silence-and-Cake) to become this Sailor-Moon-type anime/manga character who had the big anime eyes and absolutely dead white skin. I was somehow convinced to wear a mini-skirt--yellow I think--and carry a staff and a long thin sword. There was either a tail or the dress had a long train in part of the dream. So I was buried in white pancake makeup, and S&C swooped around my face with black eyeliner to make my eyes anime'd up.

Then there was some kind of climbing race, a la Battle of the Network Stars but inside a pool area (no water in the pool, just really high ceilings and diving boards and so forth) that had been set up as a sort of air-maze. I had been fitted with these ridiculous cartoon shoes that were just wood blocks with padding on them. The first part of this competition was climbing a "dragon" made of a long inflated tube. The point was to make contestants look ridiculous trying to climb up in the air and falling off. I walked up to it and stabbed it with my sword to let the air all out, and then walked over the the diving tower and climbed up, with difficulty in by wooden-block shoes, to the top of the maze. It took some time, but eventually I made it and then wound through the maze to the head of the "dragon" and simply slid down as it if were a tall twisty slide. I could hear the commentary guys (yes, we had "sportscasters") raving about how creative and take-no-prisoners I had been to up-end the competition, and everyone was cheering for me. I was super-fierce and non-smiling in my white make-up carrying my sword.

At some point it turned into a big auditorium and then devolved into a choral concert or something, and then I was changing into my original clothes, and the cleaners were putting all the chairs and tables away in the hall while I waited out in the lobby stairwells for someone or other.

So, Dream Interpreters: WTF?

Round One--House Cleanup in the books

BIL was here over the weekend, along with Sparky. We did a LOT of things!

• The office is emptier and a little more organized; I need to clear out files yet, but the surfaces have been emptied and lots of stuff went in the trash and elsewhere. 
• The basement...well, the main room looks worse, but the workroom/shop area...! I can actually walk into it without feeling like I'll trip and kill myself getting to the lights. BIL went through a lot of stuff from his side of the family. Much of it got tossed. There are at least two full contractor bags of trash that I'll need to get to the curb over the course of several weeks; ditto with all the magazines and other recycling. 
• We got the Honda started and moved out of the garage. The giant heap of cardboard boxes is collapsed into one box for recycling. 
• The insurance paperwork is sorted and generally made sense of. 
• BIL found Beast's Social Security card (which I need for part of the Medicaid form) in a box of Random Things From Some Drawer. 
• Sparky found Beast's cross necklace, which he now has with him.

And yesterday after BIL and Sparky left, I finally cancelled SiriusXM ($200/month), downgraded DirecTV and ordered a new remote (saving $150/month), and downgraded our Sprint account to three lines and no more monthly charges for Beast's and my phone (saving $100/month). I spent, quite literally, over two hours on phone calls to Sprint to delete BIL's number from our account and was so frustrated by the end I was just repeating "ALL I want to do is delete the line. That's all" and sobbing. They kept telling me only the account holder could cancel lines, and as I'm not the account holder it can't be done. So then let's change the name on the account--nope, gotta have proof that I'm allowed to do that. So where do I fax/email the paperwork proving I'm allowed? A transfer to another department and some ridiculous procedure that involves SNAIL-MAIL, but I really need to talk to someone else about cancelling the line...transfer back to where I started but to a new person to whom I have to give my name, the name of the account, the PIN and the password. I definitely know the PIN now! Which is great, since I'm the one who created it and changed all the online account info last month after another (shorter) marathon to find out how to do that, with the threat that if I couldn't get into the account, they wouldn't get paid because I couldn't access the bill. Oh, and I left out two trips to the nearest store--the staff of which was great, by the way!--and an online chat with customer service. All this between 2 and 6 yesterday afternoon. DirecTV = 20 minutes on the phone tops. SiriusXM = no more than a 10-minute call. Sprint = a four-hour ordeal that was only resolved when I started sobbing and calling Beast "a vegetable" who can't talk on the phone for fuck's sake! I only swore once, by the way. I just have to say that when I get really upset, it becomes entirely impossible for me to understand accented English. The guy who finally just canceled the damn thing...when he told me that, I sobbed out something like, "You're the nicest guy I've spoken to today" and then hung up without further ado. So I hope he a) deleted the right line, and b) actually DID something because I have no confirmation # to prove anything with.

[Time out to check the online bill. Guess what. The extra line is still on the bill. Also, I'm "past due" with my payment, but only $.26 is due. My next payment will be minus the $15 and whatever other charges for that extra line. I hate HATE Spring customer service.]

In short, all the wind is out of my sails. The house, superficially, looks worse: more piles in places I can see in rooms I use, and I still have all this goddamned paperwork to fill out which requires still more phone calls and planning and TIME and Finding Things (like 5 years' worth of tax returns and pay stubs and bank statements) and Making Copies of Found Things (same as above)... The weather is abysmal: rainy and dank and gray. The mailbox "temporary" fix has tipped over into the street, so I'm going to have to go to the P.O. and ask them to hold my mail for pickup till I can get someone to power out a new post-hole for a new post and mailbox setup (which means waiting for the ground to thaw). And the stupid Honda is still here, albeit out of the garage finally. The last person I want to see today is Beast, and all I want to do is crawl back in bed and alternately sleep and cry and feel sorry for myself.

Death of Facebook

Since I've given up Facebook for Lent, because I NEED TO, I've nowhere to post random stuff.

Except here.

Yay, blogs!

I had a weird dream this morning. Drew (from NYS) and Sparky had, unbeknownst to me, decided to host a small D&D gathering here. OK, fine, but I didn't find out till the day people were coming, so commenced cleaning. Turns out the living room was still carpeted (not) and arranged with the couch under the front window (not) and (enter the bizarre) there were pine needles everywhere despite not having had a real Christmas tree in our house ever (IRL). Also the wall by the front door was covered, literally covered, in tiny swarming bugs, the corner that goes up against the coat closet and half-bath had signs of major water damage we'd covered in paint and duct tape, and we had an extra couch in the front hallway. All I had was a broom to sweep. It was just awful. I collected enough stuff to roll into an area rug (not) for Sparky to empty into the trash--out of spite, I also put his shoes in the rug because they were in my way sweeping and I had had to keep yelling upstairs to ask him questions to which the answers were not very forthcoming.

(This was the center masterpiece. There was also a bit about grocery shopping and running into Melissa and her daughter O. which was not overly weird, except the store and the manner in which we were shopping and unloading in the parking lot. The parking lot itself was fenced, which is weird for sure. On the other end of this main dream, I seem to recall my niece Katherine, her husband Alan and the two kids, something about a ladder and being on vacation, and a full diaper. I have no idea what that part ties into things IRL; none whatsoever.)

Anyway: context for the main dream:

• I swept around and under the sofa in the living room yesterday because there were/are lots of crumbs in the vicinity. That's pretty much where I live and do everything these days. The floor isn't carpet, but I need to sweep again because I dropped peanuts on the floor last night.
• Trying to get Sparky to respond to any kind of communication is irritating. He's very wrapped up in his own stuff--normal--and forgets me. Not unheard of, and I'm not upset about that. It's just frustrating. So as long as I keep my passive-aggressive behavior to dreams, his shoes are probably safe with me.
• It does occur to me, though, that I'm annoyed about shoes for Beast, so this probably plays into it. I bought him new shoes at the request of the staff at his facility last week. When I saw him on Wednesday, he had his old shoes on. Maybe I should bring them home? 
• D&D? Not a clue, though Sparky at least plays. I'm sure Drew has played. Why was D here though? So weird. I'm pretty sure I've conflated him with my bro-in-law who is arriving tomorrow for a weekend visit, and who is unlikely as hell to play D&D nowadays!
• However, I did watch some Twitch footage of Sparky's channel yesterday which was him doing walk-throughs of a couple of video games. So D&D = video games? Clearly my subconscious thinks these are both luxuries that need to be set aside when Important Things need doing for Mom.
• I don't really get the pine needles at all. I used to hate cleaning up after the tree in January though, and I'm obviously concerned about the general state of cleanliness in the house. It's actually fine; I'm just obsessing.
• The leak? That's because one of my coworkers just found out that her roof is leaking, and pouring water through her walls due to an ice dam. My roof is fine.
• I'm sure the bugs are representing all the ridiculous things I need to deal with in my life. Or my quiet fear that I have unseen bugs/vermin hanging around. It took till December to get all the mice out, so there's a little hangover from that for sure. We've never had mice in the house like last year.

The shopping frame makes sense. I need to hit the store, but there's no reason to involve Melissa or O. in the trip. Nor do I need to shop at the store from my childhood, magically transported to the middle of a fenced yard!

I've no clue what's going on with the other frame. I miss seeing those guys, though.